Porto Mobility Ranger SpacePro XL Carbon Fiber Lighweight Foldable Next Generation Electric Wheelchair (Carbon, XL Wide Seat)

Purchased chair a year ago due to degenerative neuromuscular condition, was delivered quickly and in great condition. Chair is great, very powerful and good at inclines. I am over 300 pounds and the chair has no problems getting me around and is comfortable to sit in. I’ve put a lot of miles on it and it is still going strong. Customer support is quick and responsive to questions and concerns. Purchase with confidence.

Ladies and GentlemenThe Porto Mobility Ranger Spacepro powered electric wheelchair has dramatically enhanced my life by providing me a new independence.I have been able to participate in rewarding activities that I could not, before acquiring your Ranger Spacepro. I visit family, take courses at Penn State, enjoy the cinema and theater, attend social and public events.I am now able to live a “normal lifeYour Ranger Spacepro offers many advantages:• The batteries have a very long life. I have needed to recharge them only twice since it was delivered on August 25, 2022.• The Ranger Spacepro is light, only 43 pounds after removing the batteries. It is made from space-age polymer rather than metal.• The Ranger Spacepro is therefore easily lifted in and out of the trunk of my automobile by most adults.• I am able to lift the Ranger Spacepro on my own in and out of the trunk of my automobile with your telescopic motor powered hoist.• Both the Ranger Spacepro electric powered wheelchair and the telescopic powered hoist collapse for easy storage together in my automobile trunk.You have given me a rich, new life!John RonanReview April 25, 2022:Dear Ladies and Gentlemen at Porto Mobility,I recently purchased your Ranger Spacepro motorized wheelchair. I am impressed with the quality of the design and performance. It has vastly increased my mobility.The wheelchair is comfortable, stable against tipping, easily maneuvered with the joystick and has a range for fully charged batteries that comfortably meets my needs.The wheelchair is made of space age Carbon Fiber which weighs a remarkably light 43 pounds. The wheelchair is easily carried by most adults including our son who is looking after my wife and myself. We are in our late eighties.I am unable to lift the wheelchair by myself. I have purchased your Hercules wheelchair lifter which makes it possible for me to load the wheelchair in and out of the back of our SUV. The wheelchair lifter weighs 25 pounds and is light enough for me to load and unloaded it from our SUV.Your Ranger Spacepro motorized wheelchair has given me the independence to transport my wife and myself to our medical physicians, shopping, and family. In many ways your wheelchair with the lifter has given me and my wife a new life.Sylvia and John Ronan

On Christmas Eve of 2022 my wife had a debilitating stroke. Her entire left side has been affected and she cannot walk. After exhaustive research we were fortunate to find the Ranger SpacePro Wheelchair. From day one this chair has been a blessing. Delivery was a snap, and the chair fired right up within minutes! It is one of the best purchases of our life. It has given my wife a new sense of independence and empowerment! It is the most compact and lightweight power wheelchair we were able to find. The battery life is exceptional, only to be bested by the power and maneuverability. The quality is excellent, and the customer service is even better. We experienced one minor problem; called into Porto Mobility, and Al cheerfully and immediately solved our problem. If you have a loved one, that’s been stricken by stroke or some other debilitating disease, Porto Mobility has a solution for you! Thank you again Porto Mobility for returning some joy and independence back into my wife’s life.Sincerely,Brian CordakWoodstock,GA

These are the first two sentences in the manual: “The company reserves the right to make any changes and improvement [sic] without prior notice. It reserves and also the property of models and forbids their reproduction, even partial.” That was my first clue not to expect much from the manual, and it didn’t exceed my lowered expectations. It is confusing, poorly written, repetitive, and self-contradictory.Nevertheless, through trial and error, I’ve figured out how to use the wheelchair.Mechanically, it’s well thought out, well-constructed, and sturdy. The mechanical parts operate smoothly. I wish the arms were longer (I’m 6’ 2”), since the front wheels are extended well beyond the front of the seat, probably in search of greater stability along the pitch axis. Seated in the chair, I can easily reach the two levers that control whether the rear wheels are connected to the motor or not.Leaving out the control system, electrically the chair is well executed. The twin motors are strong enough to deal with serious inclines, and the electromagnetic braking is effective.The control system is where the chair, ahem, stumbles. The left two buttons are mislabeled in the manual. It says they are Speed up and Speed down. They only indirectly control the speed. As far as I can figure out, the control system has no idea how fast the two driven wheels are turning. What the buttons control is the power delivered to the motor. If you are on a surface whose slope is constant, then the buttons do control the speed. But you’ll need to hit Speed up to maintain your speed if you go from level to climbing a hill. That’s pretty intuitive, but the speed/power confusion can bite you in a big way in some circumstances.Let’s say you’re going straight ahead, and the path you’re on slopes from left to right. Since the real wheels perform both steering and move the wheelchair forward, you’ll need to angle the joystick slightly to the uphill side to go in a straight line. This will apply more power to the downhill wheel. If the wheelchair knew the speed of the wheels, that would be unnecessary. Now let’s say you want to turn in the uphill direction, and at the same time the path slope changes direction, so if the left side was uphill, now the right side is uphill. I find it very difficult to stay on the path in that situation; the chair has a tendency to leave the path on the new downhill side. And if you’ve turned the control labeled Speed down too far, the wheelchair won’t apply enough power to keep that from happening.Now that I understand this, I can avoid paths where I know that’s going to happen. But it makes me reluctant to explore new territory without scouting it out first, since the turning circle is not tiny.The other control issue is the joystick sensitivity and linearity. Ideally, you’d want a linear response through the entire range of displacement away from the center position. That’s not how it works. At first, nothing happens. A little more displacement gets you power that comes on quite suddenly. Further from that, you get a little more power, but the range from the lowest power that moves the wheels on level ground to the highest power you can get with the joystick hard over is not nearly as great as I’d like it to be. The net of all this is that it’s very difficult to make precise, controlled movements in tightly restricted spaces, and you’d better make sure your hands and feet aren’t going to get bashed.In many circumstances, these control issues aren’t going to be an problem. I’m restricting my usage to places where they aren’t a problem. For those uses, I’d give this sucker a five.But the control issues strike me as a missed opportunity. What would it cost to have speed sensors on the wheels and have the controls labeled speed actually control speed? And what would it cost to have the joystick sensitivity be linear with a large range? Not much, I think. Then sidehills would be less of an issue, and the chair would be precisely controllable in tight quarters.[Added after 3 months of use. ]Battery charge indicator is highly nonlinear. For a long while, all the lights are lit up. When the first green light goes out, the chair is already not as peppy as it is at full charge. When all the green lights are out, it's downright sluggish. I use fastest "speed" outdoors, and the middle one indoors. It's hard to change batteries; the release takes a fair amount of force and is hard to find by feel. A more positive locking mechanism for the batteries would be a big help. I've decided that changing the batteries is enough of a hassle that I charge them in place.[Added after 14 month of use] Battery capacity is dropping. I used to charge once a week, and now I need to charge every 4 or 5 days. To make it easier to charge in place, loosen the know under the right arm of the chair and rotate the armrest 180 degrees, so that the socket for the charger cable is on top. The index marker is not up. Feel the index marker on the cable and turn that up, then plug it in. You can even do it in very dim light. There have been complaints about rubbing. To avoid that, move the joystick so that the chair can go slightly forward or slightly backward as you spin it around. WIth practice, I can now navigate sidehills that gave me difficulty before, but there are side slopes that the chair just can't handle.